In this short video, we’ll answer the question, how often should I clean my wool rugs?

To answer that, let’s look at what abrasive dirt really is and how it affects your rugs. The video shows a magnified image of sandpaper. You can easily see the sharp edges that act as cutting tools. Also a picture of magnified common sand, and again, you can see the sharp edges on each grain. Sand is largely made of silica, and silica is what they make glass out of. You could think of sand as tiny little pieces of broken glass.

When you walk across your rugs, you put your full body weight on these sharp edges and that results in damage to your rugs. The sharp edges literally dig into and cut the fibres. Remember, wool is just hair, so it’s soft and easy to cut. Rugs can last hundreds of years, but not if they’re exposed to this kind of wear, there’s something that actually makes this problem even worse.

One of the really great things about wool is that it hides dirt so well. This is because of the way the fibres are made. As you can see, the surface of the fibre has these little ridges, almost like scales on a fish. Each one of these scales provides a place for dirt to hide. Now, in one way, that’s good because even if your rug has some dirt in it, it won’t look like it.

Wool is excellent at hiding dirt, and that’s one of the reasons it’s such a perfect material for rugs. The problem occurs when people that own rugs wait until their rugs look dirty before they bring them in for a good cleaning. By the time a wool rug looks dirty, it can have almost unbelievable amounts of abrasive dirt in it, and that leads to damage to the fibres of the rug. Once this damage occurs, it can’t be undone.

As more and more dirt penetrates the fibres, it leads to a loss of colour and vibrancy making the rug look dull and lifeless. This process happens gradually. So many times people don’t notice. See how the rug in the video looks flat and dull with very little colour prior to the wash, and look at how vibrant the colours are after washing.

Proper washing removes the abrasive dirt and restores the shine the natural wool has. That’s why most rugs should be washed every one to three years, depending on how good the wool is, how much traffic the rug gets, and whether or not the rug is properly vacuumed.

If it’s been too long since your rug’s last bath, give us a call and let us restore the beauty your rug was meant to have. If you have any questions, feel free to call and we’ll be happy to help you with no obligation.

And be sure to let us know if you like this video.